French newspapers team up for leverage in negotiations with Apple

Eight of France's most powerful newspapers and magazines have teamed up in hopes of gaining leverage in negotiations with Apple over the iPad maker's 30 percent cut of App Store sales.

The group of French publications are said to have joined together and begun negotiating with Apple as a collective, according to Reuters. The participating parties include newspaper Le Figaro, sports daily L'Equipe, business daily Les Echos and news weekly le Nouvel Observateur.

The participating parties reportedly plan to keep their publications from Apple's Newsstand application, which will be a part of the forthcoming iOS 5 software update. Newsstand will sell newspapers and magazines much like Apple sells e-books through its iBookstore for the iPad and iPhone.

Though the French publications are usually "fierce competitors," they have put aside their differences and come together to take on Apple, a company that the head of new media of Le Figaro said is "infinitely powerful."

Disputes between Apple and publishers over content on the iPad have persisted since the touchscreen tablet first went on sale in 2010. Most significantly, a subscription disagreement led international business paper the Financial Times to pull its application from the iPhone and iPad App Store.

Rather than comply with Apple's rules for the App Store, the Financial Times opted to create an HTML5-optimized version of its website. That allows readers to continue to view the publication in the iPad's Safari Web browser without the need for a native application.

Apple oversees all content that is available for download on the App Store, and also takes a 30 percent cut of all transactions that take place. That policy applies to paid applications, as well as in-app purchases and recurring subscriptions.

Rather than comply with Apple's rules for the App Store, the Financial Times opted to create an HTML5-optimized version of its website. That allows readers to continue to view the publication in the iPad's Safari Web browser without the need for a native application.

I usually hate iOS formatted websites. They almost always suck and they often prevent you from breaking out of the crappy design and visiting the real website. It is particularly aggravating that you can't zoom on those types of sites. Companies should just optimize their regular web site for viewing on iOS devices rather than squeeze you into such a dumbed down design. Mostly a problem with iPhone. They usually don't auto detect the iPad for that purpose.

So, eight French newspapers think they're going to accomplish in negotiations with Apple what the entire magazine publishing industry has already failed to do? Ooooookaaaaay.

Uh, actually it's not "the entire magazine publishing industry" because if it were these guys would be included in that.

What happened before was just with the USA magazines which is far, far, far from the whole industry.

In any case this is just the same old story we've already seen. They will argue about it. A few (well it's France so probably a lot), of politicians who have their hands in the publishers pockets will be outraged. Apple will threaten to close up shop in France if they don't like it, and then they will cave-in.

Those that think they can get away with it will join the Apple store, those that don't will move to HTML magazine formats. Done.

What happened before was just with the USA magazines which is far, far, far from the whole industry.

Sure, but still far, far, far more than eight French newspapers. Regardless of my omission of a qualifier like "a large portion of the" or "the American magazine publishing industry", my point still stands.

The real problem for the publishing industry is that Microsoft has already said that they will emulate Apple's 30% rule in their own app store. That leaves Google only charging 10%, which they are doing to try to undercut Apple and grow the Android tablet business. And as we all know, that's not working too well.